E5 – Blessing Christ

“Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.” (Matthew XXIV, 30)

This engraving is not divided plastically into two equal parts. Above is a cathedral, with seven naves representing the seven sacraments. They go from bottom to top, deforming in style from Romanesque-Gothic to Gothic of the earliest, ripe and flaming periods. The central aisle shoots under a facade that connects the two towers. On the church are the apostles visible with above them the seven angels with the trumpets of the apocalypse. The blessing Christ blesses with one hand, the other condemns with the king’s staff. A cone of light emerges from the hand of blessing, separating the woman at the mill and the man in the field from their condemned neighbors. The light cone also contains the hut, the light tower, the sailing ship and the fig tree. In the dark part, the big city, various other intricate objects, a woman at the mill, and a man on the land remain visible. It should also be noted that despite a straight-lined perspective, the heavenly cathedral gives the impression of being built on a spherical surface with purely architectural arrangement.

This work was made in Cocaraya (Bolivia) between the 12th of February and the 10th of May 1934.